Ella Maschiach's BI Blog

March 28, 2014

We had a book in Panorama NovaView which we had made about a year ago. The book had views that were all based on the same PowerPivot cube which was published to a SharePoint Server (so it was recognized as cube by the viewer). So, a year had passed and we needed to add to our book new views which would be based on a new PowerPivot cube. The data in both cubes was about workers in different units and the authorizations on the cubes were given so that every manger would see just the workers in his units. When I came to check to simulate one of my users on the book, I saw that tough he could see the views based on the original cube, he couldn’t see the views that were based on a new cube. I, as an administrator with full access rights could see all the views perfectly well. And so it begins…

The security definitions for a view that’s based on a PowerPivot cube in Panorama are managed both through an empty SSAS cube and the Panorama Dashboard security definitions. We tried for starters to migrate the new user definitions to the server:

Unfortunately enough, that didn’t help. We looked at the empty cube to see if a user was missing, checked the Manage Roles for the book, tried synchronizing the roles… Nothing helped. So obviously, we went on to the next stage which was us clutching at straw.. We went into the folder on the Panorama server that held the definitions of the book. Apart from containing the definitions of the different views, it also had in it two files that manage the book, the Properties.xml file and the Schema.xml file:

I opened both files in notepad just to see inside of both of them that:

Which basically means that the book is connected to the original Excel file with the original PowerPivot file. And that’s even though I’ve just added to it views based on a new PowerPivot file. That didn’t make any sense to me. I went into the Panorama NovaView designer to look at the book and the views. Right clicking on the views I could see that they were indeed connected to their relevant PowerPivot cube. But right clicking on on the book properties showed me yet again that the data for it was connected just to the original cube. So, knowing that each view was already connected to the relevant PowerPivot cube, I decided to delete the definition for the book which was restricting it just to on cube:

I “ok” – ed the warning message I got for the delete. I tried re-entering as my user and … Voila! problem solved! (Sigh of relief)

So if your users are having a hard time seeing a new view in your book which is based on a new cube for the Panorama book, check if your book isn’t also restricted in it’s data to the first cube it was connected with.